Writing Update: September & October 2024
First place in Westword’s monthly micro competition, rewritten mythology, horror, and more!
We’re in my favorite season of the year, Fall, which includes soup weather, sweater weather, and running weather. Before I get into what was published the past two months, I want to draw your eyes to HAD’s 99-word issue. The pieces are punchy and blisteringly short, leaving a serious emotional impact in their wake. In particular, the two below stunners really took my breath away:
They Found a Beer Bottle at the Bottom of the Mariana Trench by Catherine Weiss
Breakup Story by Michelle Ross
What was published in September & October
Now, onto a few of my pieces of writing. I’ve ordered them below from shortest to longest, spanning genres of general lit to contemporary fantasy, and, because it’s Halloween, a bit of horror in between.
A California Eulogy - Blink-Ink
Read time: <1 minute (50 words)
Under the theme “Summer Nights,” this micro is only available if you subscribe to their set (all four seasons for $15 if you’re in the US).
A Fear of Open Water, or Perhaps, Something Else - Westword Monthly Micro
Read time: <2 minutes (150 words)
This is the first time I’ve won a competition, and it’s also one of my favorite short form pieces I’ve written this year. While I love the photo they chose for the work, it’s based on the image below:
She Wished For a Field of Seagulls - Club Plum (Horror Issue)
Read time: <3 minutes (280 words)
This is my second appearance in Club Plum’s annual horror issue. Interestingly enough, both pieces don’t necessarily meet the conventional horror genre definition, but they intend us to think about how horror permeates the every day of our lives.
This is not a love story - Carmina Magazine
Read time: <10 minutes (1,000 words)
Looking for a longer read based on the Narcissus myth entwined with Social Media, or just sad that Kaos got cancelled? This magazine for modern mythology has your fix, and even includes an author’s note about the work at the end.
My favorite reads of September & October
Non-fiction: Faith, Hope, and Carnage by Sean O’Hagan and Nick Cave
In the past few years, I’ve become a big fan of Nick Cave, musician and writer, who has been on the music scene since 1973. You might know his work from his song, “Right Red Hand” which serves as the theme music for Peaky Blinders. This book is a transcription of interviews between Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan, conducted over the phone during the pandemic. It’s less a biography and more a discussion of and meditation on creating art and engaging with spirituality, and contains multitudes, including the act of someone coming to terms with their own views and opinions in the company of someone they trust, in real time. His new album, Wild God, is worth checking out.
Fiction: The Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
Written in the present tense with a stream-of-consciousness style, this heartbreaking work follows the splintering of a family as a far right political party takes over Ireland and, in the process, does away with dissidents, starting with the main character’s husband, a prominent union leader. It’s a meditation on the fragility of stability, the easy over index of those in power to utilizing force against their own citizens, and the quickness from which someone can go from being a citizen of their own country to an asylum seeker fighting for their life.
Favorites from the archives:
As an ode to my last appearance in Club Plum’s 2022 horror issue, I give you Perspective.
As the managing editor wrote for introduction of the issue at the time, “I wish I could introduce this year’s Literary Horror issue, Volume 3, Issue 4 of Club Plum, with something light, paying homage to breath-stopping make-believe horrors that entertain or instruct, or nodding to wondrous non-horror works, bringing it full circle to this issue. But we are in the midst of real horror that I must speak to instead.”
In that sense, so little, in the past two years, has changed.
Other things of note & the look ahead
If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen I was a finalist for The Forge’s Annual Creative Nonfiction Flash competition. And So She Runs will be (so far) my first publication of 2025, and I can’t wait to share it with all of you, as well as my first competitive appearance for creative nonfiction.
Up ahead, look out for a sci-fi piece in December, coming to you from Literally Stories. Looking forward to sharing more with you as we close out 2024!